UK man builds life-sized Dalek, furthers intergalactic evil

Sci-fi fandom and the DIY ethic go hand in hand — and for evidence, you need only look at the large number of Star Trek and Star Wars -themed projects we’ve seen in this space over the years. Still, few of them have achieved the scope of the full-sized Dalek that Rob Bosher built for about £700 (roughly $1,140).

NSF backs development of laser-guided robot wheelchairs

It’s been well over a year since we last saw the laser-guided, self-docking wheelchair developed by folks at Lehigh University, and now the team is back with an altogether more ambitious project. According to associate professor John Spletzer, the recipient of a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the goal is to “extend the autonomy of the wheelchair so it can navigate completely in an urban setting and take you wherever you need to go.” This will be done by equipping robotic chairs with laser and camera sensors (which the team developed for the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge ) as well as exhaustive, Google Street View-esque maps of the city where they will be operating. Of course, these guys will be operating in a busy urban environment, so in addition to large-scale 3D maps, they must be equipped with motion planning features for operating in dense crowds and a changing environment

Japanese researchers debut wheelchair-replacing RODEM "universal vehicle"

Look out, Rascal.

Toyota’s mind-controlled wheelchair boast fastest brainwave analysis yet, most stylish EEG cap

Mind-controlled wheelchairs are becoming all the rage these days, but before you start letting your thoughts wander elsewhere, this latest from researchers at the Brain Science Institute (BSI) — Toyta Collaboration Center have what they claim is a system that’ll control the ride using brain waves analyzed every 125 milliseconds, which it boasts bests the competition by several seconds. Testers using the wheels and EEG cap system have achieved accuracy up to 95 percent which, as you can see in the video after the break, will make cubicle obstacle courses a challenge of the past.

Mind-controlled wheelchair prototype is truly, insanely awesome

We’ve seen brain-controlled wheelchairs in the pas t, but we’ve never seen them in action. This one, developed and built at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, uses an EEG cap worn on the head, using a P300 neurophysiological protocol and automated navigation

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